.....................................page.Poetry has designs on painting,wants to be thick-as-icing wet colour,3-D cool as marble Venus,hot metal Moloch with outstretched arms,the eternal stupefying Sphinx.Poetry wants to play street side saxophone solo,fragrant as a girl in heels

as she exits revolving doors.

Wants to be an art house movie with gritty city streets,with jolts of altered consciousness.Poetry wants to be the world

sucked from an ice cream stick.

Story, is a sparrow.Story disappears, flitsto the landscape of another mindnested forever in the hearer.Story is a finger, bony and gnarled.Story points away from herself,points till the embers diepoints till the last dull sheenfades from the old clawed nail.

Thank you inc. Moloch epitomizes human depravity better than anything else I could think of. And of course poetry's oeuvre includes depravity too. I was trying to give a sampling of poetry's turf with attention to all the senses. Touch: The hot furnace god plays off against the cool stone goddess.

Much better with the visual effect, I do like a visual effect; it kinda makes it a bit more 'real' if that makes sense.

Hmmm, yes throwing children into an inferno as a worship/sacrifice to a god/demon type thing, quite depraved, but obscure, few of us have heard of him these days, but does make a wonderful contrast to the Venus, I always think of the one in the shell, always makes me think of life and creation, a better image for God than a white bearded old git in my opinion, Venus would be an excellent God. Though maybe a better Gaia…

Thinking on, I'm not sure what I’d use for depravity, probably some modern festival, but they seem quite tame too, bring back saturnalia and such events...those wonderful Romans knew how to party, but alas again obscure to the masses...

I have to confess I hadn’t spotted the five senses, it all fits a little better now, though I did think it was good before, that snippet of knowledge gives it a little extra :)

Thanks inc. I was being ultra purist thinking that the blog should have no links or allusions not directly related to poetry. Silly of me.Hummm, one variety of our depravity seems similar to the ancient Canaanites in my view. We still sacrifice our infants though not for the fertility of the fields these days. Now its more for convenience and lifestyle. Though most frequently done before the discomfort of birth.

inc, I always appreciate your comments.Are moral issues insoluble if there is nothing normative outside of and beyond our own current views and feelings? Or, if in fact we are ultimately only animals, are perhaps moral issues simply irrelevant?

It's a sticking point with me, the moral thing, personal morals vs societies morals, as each individual will perceive each moral case/view with their own slant etc etc Acceptable behaviour for one, is not for another…As for the animal thing, are we?Are we not? Kinda takes us to the soul thing, which is supposed to be a separator, man from beast, though intelligence should define that, the separation, not the soul, are we animals that can think and choose? or does our soul or our vanity make us more than beast? Uber-beast? We certainly win the 'most dangerous' category...So do animals have morals? Do they make choices or merely react? I have to say I don’t know.Do we make choices or react, I wonder about that too, as most of what we do is a reaction caused from the continuous conditioning that society places on us. A complicated reflex…So even if we have a soul, does it do anything? And where is it?Head? Heart? Liver? … See, it’s heading back to the faith thing, it all spirals back, maybe we are not animals because we have imagination, we can believe in the boogie man, in Santa Claus, in Easter bunnies in God/s etc…Maybe that’s the only separator.Maybe the soul is a daydream, and morals are just people agreeing to get along with a minimum of friction…unless it suits them otherwise.

Thought provoking stuff Ish, as always, I do enjoy the stimulation.And will undoubtedly be mulling this matter over till bed.

Nailing down a differentiator between man and beast is tricky. We can't say absolutely that animals do not have a moral sense or imagination either. But they do not give us much of evidence of either. "Nature is both cruel and non-cruel."'Maybe the soul is a daydream, and morals are just people agreeing to get along with a minimum of friction…unless it suits them otherwise.' I agree with no God in the picture this is what we are left with. And what about the bloke who gets a buzz out of your 'friction'? Is he entitled to a good time? The Marquis de Sade thought so.

Humm. I am getting a bit challenged with these animal paintings. I am still experimenting. They need to be good, obviously but also done relatively quickly so they don't take up whole day. We'll see ...